“HTC followed up strong results on Wednesday by buying out VIA’s stake in S3 Graphics. The deal, worth $300 million, effectively gives control of the graphics chipset maker,” Electronista reports. “About $147 million will go directly to VIA, while the remaining $153 million will go to S3’s investor WTI.”
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Electronista reports that HTC may “be taking responsibility of S3 to head off patent challenges. S3 just recently won ITC disputes on two patents versus Apple and, barring appeal, now has influence over the iPhone maker. HTC is currently facing multiple Apple lawsuits and could use S3 as leverage.”
More information in the full article here.
Chess match continues with no end in sight.
Hope Apple knows how to play Chinese Checkers!
Not quite, research spendings will lower; as to this case, S3 will not help HTC much since Apple’s patents on multi-touch, “bumping” scolling, pinch-to-zoom and other gestures are much bolder than these purely technical local patents S3 holds.
However, lets see what courts will decide (if we will be still alive when this happens ;)))
Apparently Apple did not believe that S3 was worth $300M. Otherwise they would have reached into the chump change jar.